Thursday, June 18, 2015

Release of classified data: a bigger issue than just Hilliary Clinton

Fox News releases this interesting bit (including mostly un-redacted email) that indicates that former Secretary of State Hilliary Clinton and her peers in the State Department actively discussed the terms of an agreement being negotiated on pretty much unsecured email servers. Now the former Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, is correct to note that this information would ordinarily be classified, as it touches on defense agreements and the like.

More significant, however, is what the article gets to later; that Hilliary has an "out" in that obviously her peers were representing that data which should have been classified as unclassified. So technically, her statement of never discussing classified data on that account is correct, but....

.....only because it appears that a large portion of the State Department has decided to be rather lax about classifying information. This just might explain part of why our "geopolitical opponents" seem to be running circles around the U.S. They may be reading things that ought to be classified before John Kerry does.

A side note is that I wonder whether high State Department officials are breaking the law by refusing to classify such information, and at whose request was this done. I'm guessing the law was broken at the request of someone whose name is very interesting. Don't hold your breath waiting for the Department of Justice to investigate, of course.